But first, let's define exactly what a plugin is (and how they work with a WordPress website).

What is a WordPress Plugin, Anyway?

A WordPress plugin is an app or a piece of software you can add to your WordPress site. It extends the functionality or adds a new feature to your existing website.

WordPress will function on its own, but you can make it do exactly what you want it to do with plugins:

Want to sell digital products on your blog? There's a plugin for that.

Want to make sure you never publish anything by accident again? There's a plugin for that.

Want to turn your shell of a WordPress theme into a thriving eCommerce store? There's a plugin for that.

But like I said, there are more than 55,000 WordPress plugins out there. And just like the apps in the Apple App Store (or Shopify apps in the Shopify App Store), there are a few that stand out from the rest.

Free WordPress plugins are good enough for most beginners… But what if you’re not a beginner? And you want more than the regular features and functionalities from a free plugin?

Premium WordPress plugins come with additional features, better support, and regular updates. The only catch: they are NOT free.

They increase your costs of running a WordPress website faster than you think.

Not anymore!

AppSumo partners with WordPress plugin developers to bring you the BEST premium plugins at a fraction of the cost.

Grow your website today with the best WordPress plugins without breaking the bank.

WordPress Plugins for Security and Backup

It doesn’t seem important until your website is compromised or down. Trust me, it’s not fun. Here are some of the best WordPress plugins that protect your website.

1. Akismet Anti-Spam

Akismet is the must-have WordPress plugin to protect you from spam comments. In fact, it comes with WordPress CMS as you install WordPress into your hosting server.

You know you’re on a safe hand with Akismet because it’s built by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. And it’s used by millions of websites filtering and blocking an average of 75 million spam comments per hour.

How does Akismet work?

Every time a visitor posts a comment, Akismet checks it against its database (collected from all participating websites since 2005). If it’s spam, it’s deleted automatically. If spam gets through and the user marks it as spam, it gets added to the database so Akismet can filter similar spam in the future.

It’s a piece of WordPress plugin that only gets smarter and better over time.

The BEST part? Akismet is free.

2. Wordfence

Wordfence protects your WordPress website from online hackers and attackers. It does this with an endpoint firewall that examines and blocks malicious traffic.

On top of that, the Wordfence security scanner acts as a powerful sidekick of the firewall. It looks for malware and compares core, theme, and plugin files with what is in the WordPress.org repository, checking their integrity and reporting any changes to you.

With Wordfence firewall and security scanner, your WordPress website is safe and you get alerts for security risks (like software vulnerabilities) so you can address them before your website gets attacked.

It also comes with login security features that allow you to enable two-factor authentication and reCAPTCHA on your website.

3. UpdraftPlus

Backing up a WordPress website is the last thing that comes to most people’s minds… Until they need a backup to restore their compromised websites.

And trust me, it’s a P.I.T.A process if you’re not prepared.

UpdraftPlus simplifies backup and restoration. With UpdraftPlus, you can back up your files and database into the cloud folder of your choice (Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, and more), and restore them with a single click.

It’s free to use but you can upgrade to a premium plan for more features like:

Incremental backups.

Duplicate and migrate your WordPress website easily.

More storage destinations (OneDrive, BackBlaze, Azure, SFTP).

Database encryption.

Advanced reporting, and more.

Alternative:BackUpWordPress is an excellent solution for backup and it’s free too.

4. LoginPress

Add /wp-admin/ to any domain name and you can see if the website uses WordPress CMS. #Lifehack

Unfortunately, the standard login URL makes your website vulnerable if you’re using WordPress. Any person — and bot — can get to your login page and try to access your website.

LoginPress secures and rebrands the login pages of your WordPress websites. With LoginPress, you can customize the login page URL so only visitors with the correct URL can access your login page.

6. WP Super Cache

It helps improve the user experience of the returned visitors by increasing server load speed. As site speed and user experience improved, so do your website SEO and conversions.

WP Super Cache is a WordPress plugin that does just that. It generates static HTML files for your WordPress website and serves them to 99% of your website visitors.

It has 2+ million active installs thanks to its easy-to-use settings (and it’s free).

7. Insert Headers and Footers

As a marketer, online entrepreneur, and blogger, it’s not uncommon to add a piece of code or scripts to the header or footer of your website.

Be it Google website verification, Facebook Pixel, or custom scripts from your email service provider...

The truth is, there’s never an easy way to do that on WordPress CMS.

Insert Headers and Footers is a simple plugin that helps you easily do that. Insert code like Google Analytics, custom CSS, Facebook Pixel, or more to the header or footer — without the need of messing with the WordPress theme.

A simple, straightforward solution to a BIG problem...

8. ShortPixel Image Optimizer

Slow websites are a big NO-NO in today’s world of internet. And one of the key contributors to a slow website is unoptimized images.

Ecommerce data such as top products, conversion rates, average order value, and more.

MonsterInsights also comes with multiple add-ons that allow you to do things like forms integration, advanced ecommerce tracking, and EU compliance improvement.

10. Rank Math SEO

Optimize your website for search engine OR die… If you have a website and create content, repeat this every day before you do anything else.

Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t come with any SEO functionalities. This is where Rank Math SEO comes into play.

Rank Math lets you customize the search settings (focus keywords, post title, meta descriptions) of each blog post and helps you score every blog post with an SEO checklist. You can then preview how your pages and posts will look like in the SERPs, in rich snippets, and even when shared on social media.

Rank Math also comes with modular frameworks such as 404 monitor, redirections, AMP, sitemap, Google search console integration that you can toggle on and off.

It’s hands down the best SEO WordPress plugin you can find in 2020. And it’s FREE.

Alternative: You can use Yoast SEO as an alternative but most premium features in Yoast SEO are free with Rank Math.

11. Sumo

Running a WordPress blog as an aspiring author (p.s. Check out this podcast episode where the Chief Sumo interviews Ryan Holiday)? Growing a SaaS startup? Starting a new ecommerce store?

15. Restrict Content Pro

Restrict Content Pro is a complete solution that helps you create a membership site or online course on WordPress CMS.

It does this by giving you the ability to show some of the content and gate the rest. If a visitor wants to join your membership site OR see the entirety of your course, they have to sign up.

But there’s much, much more to like about this plugin.

They make it easy to create discount codes, pull reports, gather custom data on your members and accept payments with major integrations.

16. WPComplete

Ask any online course creator the biggest challenge of teaching online… And you’ll get this: low course engagement and completion.

WPComplete is a lightweight, easy-to-use plugin, built to solve this problem for WordPress users.

With WPComplete, you can make your online course fully interactive in a few clicks.

It adds a complete button in all of your course lessons so your students can mark lessons as complete as they go through them. You can then add a progress bar/chart on the student dashboard to help them track their progress.

You can customize WPComplete to match with the style of your website, and integrate it with the membership or course plugin you use (for example, Restrict Content Pro).

WordPress Plugins for Content Management

WordPress is built as a CMS. Here are some of the best plugins to take the content management functionalities to the next level.

17. Classic Editor

Everyone raves about the new WordPress block editor (Gutenberg) when it first rolls out… but NOT me.

It wants to be Medium but it’s not. It adds more weights to the website (additional lines of codes). And it replaces the classic editor we have all used to and loved.

19. Custom Post Type UI

Have you ever wanted more than pages and posts on WordPress? What if you want to create a new post type for your portfolio? Or for reading notes like this?

Custom Post Type UI provides an easy solution for registering and managing new post types and taxonomies in the WordPress CMS.

While Custom Post Type UI helps you register a new post type, the free WordPress plugin doesn’t have the feature to display the new post type. This is where Custom Post Type UI Extended, a premium plugin by the same developer, comes in.

Use them to add and display any post types you like from your portfolio to your customers’ success stories.

20. Smart Podcast Player

Raise your hand if you run a podcast… I see you.

Smart Podcast Player makes it easy to design and integrate your podcasts into your WordPress website.

Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income developed the awesome Smart Podcast Player after struggling to find a podcast player that was not only functional but also looked nice, was mobile-friendly and gave listeners the freedom to listen to his episodes at the speed they wanted.

The media player also comes with a custom call-to-action (CTA) button where you can use to grow your email subscribers.